Coping With Barking Dogs

Coping With Barking Dogs

Please help before I go over the edge. I moved into my house 18 months ago and the dogs next door have nearly driven me crazy. Every day, especially between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. they bark incessantly. The love to come to the edge of their property and bark right at my property line so that it bounces off of my carport and into my house. I have asked the owners to please stop them but they have ignored me for the most part. If I so much as touch my back door, they are at the fence barking and growling and snarling at me. I have cats who don’t venture out much into that part of the yard because of the dogs so it must be me that they’re so angry with and I do mean ANGRY. If they could get over the fence, they would tear me to shreds.

It has been this way since I moved into my home and I have on several occasions yelled at them out of anger to shut up and it only makes it worse. Once I was trying to get one of my cats to come inside before I left for work and the dog barking ran her further away from the house because she was scared. I was so frustrated and angry that I kicked at the fence in an effort to get it to go away and leave us alone. The owner came out and overreacted and called the police, threatening to charge me with animal cruelty. I have tried to ignore them since then but it is really really getting to me and I’m not sure how much longer I can take this. There is an ordinance about barking dogs in this county but the burden of proof is on me to prove it in a court of law.

I am a nurse and work in a very stressful situation at night so I have to sleep during the day but I am always on guard, wondering when they will start again, so the quality of sleep I do get is very poor. I tried playing with the dogs when I first moved in and one of them responded by tossing the ball over the fence but the other one has always snarled and growled at me which makes the potentially playful one do the same thing. In addition to these dogs, there are about 13 other dogs all around me that take turns barking all day long.

Is there anything I can do on a spiritual level that will calm them down and let them know I’m not a threat? I have always been an animal lover and have taken in many stray dogs and cats over the years. I have kept the ones I couldn’t find homes for (that’s why I have 8 cats). I was planning to move and may still do so if things don’t improve but I’m wondering if there is a reason this is happening and maybe a lesson to be learned on my part. I’m open to any suggestions you may have as to why this is happening and what I can do about it. Thanks for any answers you may have. Sue

Well my dear, I can certainly empathize… I had a similar problem with the two dogs next door. My first suggestion is, of course, to move. But it isn’t always that easy. My request that the neighbours put a muzzle on their dogs was met with open hostility. I work late at night so I need to be able to sleep in a bit in the morning and to take a break in the afternoon in order to manage my schedule… what is worse is that my handicapped son gets quite upset by the dogs… they can drive him screaming out he back door..

Here are some of the things that I have learned from the experience, perhaps they will be helpful to you.

You can get some control over the situation by working with Diving Love energy. In addition to the noisy two next door, in my neighbourhood, once in a blue moon all the community animals seem to get riled – there will be a run of barking or occasionally some animal is left outside too long and you can hear them barking and crying to get in….

When I am disturbed by the noise, I send a big ball of pink and green energy – the energy of Divine Love, rolling through the neighbourhood, feel myself generating love energy and sending it out to whatever creatures seem distressed. This usually settles things down rather quickly. Other times in that meditative state I will hear an answer from the animals, telling me what is upsetting them, sometimes it’s a warning of a storm coming – the birds most often carry that message, other times it is because of something that has happened around them and they dogs are spooked… sometimes I can telepathically call the owners to attend to their pets so things settle… this I do by visualizing someone opening the door for them.

I must say that about two months ago, for an entirely different reason, I began working with filling my home with the Divine Love energy and seeing it spreading 200 feet around our home, penetrating everything 200 feet around me, below and above as well as on all sides, and since I began doing this work the dogs next door have been much less bothersome.

The next thing is the inner work… I have had to teach myself and my son to recognize that when the dogs are disturbing us, it is because there is something else at work in us, trying to get our attention – in other words, our reactions are a result of some inner disturbances and other stresses… A story to explain: as a teenager I lived on an air base. My father was in a critical group, so our entire family lived right on the base – less than a quarter mile from the hangars where they revved the turbo engines at 4 AM every day… and off and on throughout the day. When visitors came they couldn’t believe that our entire family slept peacefully in the midst of all that noise… basically, we had learned to screen it out, we simply didn’t hear it anymore… when I moved onto a very busy street in Toronto years later, I couldn’t sleep the first few nights – until I remembered living in Trenton, and realized that I had to teach myself to screen sound again… by the third night I had a restful sleep. The street noise only bothered me when I was bothered by something else…

It is the same for the dogs – since my son and I began consciously screening the sounds out, noticing what was really bugging us when the dogs were especially noisy, we have been bothered much less.

So, what I am saying here is that you are reacting to the sounds because of some other stresses. I feel the dogs are signaling you to the fact that you are about at max with the stress and need to do something to diffuse it… I have a sense that the night work may be getting to you and you are experiencing some burn out – go get some help… There is some anger in you that the dogs are trying to get you to notice, so go figure it out and deal with it straight up. Once you resolve the inner issues, you may find your neighbours will choose to move, or the right location for you falls in your lap after…(FYI, the noisiest of the two dogs next door died this winter). Learn to breathe deeply and to meditate regularly… being so easily distracted by the noise speaks to the fact that you are having trouble focusing, and relaxing, period… and this you need to do something about soon…

Finally, in your situation, something feels quite out of balance…. this is why I spoke at length of the inner work… this could be in your neighbourhood, but it could also be in you…at least 90% of the homes around me have at least one dog, but beyond the noise from next door, rarely would I complain of the situation you are describing where the whole community seems noisy…. I do feel that it is worth your considering a move to a quieter street, but I am concerned that until you dig into yourself a bit and see what has you so “wired” right now, you may find that there is some other problem in such a move…

You might find that getting a reading is very useful to you at this time in figuring out what is underlying this problem. In any case, I hope these insights are helpful, and I’ll send along anything that anyone else might come up with. Lotsa LLLove, Danielle

More Help

I am a dog owner and have anything from 4-7 at home. They are not barking dogs and we live in the country on 8 acres so even if they did it would not be that bad. A long time ago when I was in proximity to someone who let their dogs bark all night I learned about white noise. I found a radio station that played my kind of music all night and left it on low. It dulled the barking and I did not find myself so annoyed.

Try ESP and tell them you are going to calm them with gentle words of love. Tell them what good quiet dogs they are and in your mind pet them . Dogs are very subject to ESP. Their anger may well reflect the angry type of owner that harbours them. Most dogs can still bark quite nicely with a muzzle on. Try your municipality for noise by-law and see if they are contravening it in any way. You will not win a popularity contest. Also try giving them nice dog biscuits from time to time. Good luck, Victoria